Juniper Woos The Enterprise With New Products

That is, Juniper wants to be able to connect enterprise workloads regardless of where they are, and enable the requisite policies and security controls to extend from the premises data center into and across the public cloud. And do it simply and effectively.

“The promise of multicloud is workload mobility, so policies and security need to be mobile too,” said Mike Bushong, Juniper’s Vice President of Enterprise Cloud Marketing in a briefing.

“So we are driving to make multicloud simpler and more consumable for the enterprise.”

To that end, the company is rolling out new products for the data center, the campus, the branch, and (of course) the cloud.

In The Data Center

First, Juniper is rolling out new QFX spine and leaf switches for the data center, including switches built on Juniper’s custom ASIC as well as Broadcom silicon. These switches, as well as other QFX models, support EVPN VXLAN for an L2/L3 overlay fabric.

The company has also partnered with Aerohive so that you can monitor some brands of Aerohive APs from Sky Enterprise. However, you can’t manage the APs; that still falls to Aerohive’s own HiveManager.

“We aren’t trying to create a competitive product for Aerohive,” said Bushong. “They are a partner, not a competitor.”

Juniper positions Sky Enterprise as “Meraki-like.” At present, it only works with Juniper gear (aside from the Aerohive APs), but because it’s API-driven, it could be extended to cover other third-party equipment.

The campus also gets new switches, including:

EX9250
-Core/distribution switch
-802.1BR
-EVPN

EX2300
-Up to 12 ports
-1 or 2.5GbE

EX4300
-Up to 24 ports
-1 to 10GbE
-PoE
-MACsec support

In The Branch

Juniper’s SD-WAN solution is built on its NFX line for the customer CPE, with Contrail as the cloud orchestration platform.

The NFX boxes include the vSRX for firewall, security, and application identification; a hybrid WAN capability to combine MPLS, broadband, and LTE connectivity; and the ability to support VNFs from Juniper and third parties.

The company has announced a new set of devices, the NFX 150 line, in the product family. The NFX 150 family runs Intel’s ATOM processor and is available in either desktop or 1RU form factors.

In The Cloud

Finally, Juniper is making its vSRX virtual security appliance and its vMX virtual router available in AWS and Azure. The goal is to make it easier to spin up secure connections between data center or branch locations and public cloud services.

Juniper has developed templates for customers to automate the setup of these virtual appliances. Customers can use Terraform from HashiCorp, CloudFormation from Amazon, or Ansible playbooks.

By providing these templates, Juniper aims to make it easier for developers to provision cloud services while enabling network and security teams to ensure these services meet policy and security requirements.

Flowers, Candy & Love Poems

Juniper, Cisco, VMware and other traditional IT vendors are watching customers put more and more workloads into the public cloud. If these legacy companies want to stay relevant and profitable, they know they have to do two things:

1. Make their own products easier to operate.

2. Convince customers that they have software and services that are relevant in public cloud environments.

Neither of these are simple tasks, but you can see the vendors tackling them through efforts such as Cisco’s SD-Access and DNA Center, VMware’s push to build an overlay fabric that goes from the data center to the branch to the public cloud, and now Juniper’s multicloud strategy.

For those in the enterprise IT trenches, these are interesting times. The legacy vendors are going to come calling with flowers, candy, and love poems that promise the moon.

Enjoy the attention, but make sure you know exactly what you want out of a relationship before you commit to a suitor.

About Drew Conry-Murray

Drew Conry-Murray has been writing about information technology for more than 15 years, with an emphasis on networking, security, and cloud. He's co-host of The Network Break podcast and a Tech Field Day delegate. He loves real tea and virtual donuts, and is delighted that his job lets him talk with so many smart, passionate people. He writes novels in his spare time. Follow him on Twitter @Drew_CM or reach out at drew.conrymurray@packetpushers.net.